admin NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams received an extraordinary welcome as they splashed down near Tallahassee, Florida, on Tuesday after spending nine months aboard the International Space Station.
As Wilmore, Williams, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov awaited recovery, a pod of dolphins gathered around their SpaceX Dragon capsule in the crystal-clear waters. Divers were preparing to retrieve the capsule when the marine visitors put on an unexpected show.
“Now here on your screen, we can see dolphins who want to come and play with Dragon,” remarked Kate Tice, SpaceX’s engineering manager, during the company’s live video stream. She joked that the team was getting “quick assists from the honorary part of the recovery team – those dolphins.”
NASA later shared drone footage of the moment on X, writing, “The unplanned welcome crew! Crew-9 had some surprise visitors after splashing down this afternoon.”
“We got a cute little pod of dolphins. It wasn’t just one or two,” Tice added in the footage.
Following the warm greeting from their unexpected audience, the astronauts were extracted from the capsule within an hour. Smiling and waving at the cameras, they were placed in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks.
Wilmore and Williams had originally planned to be away for just a week after launching aboard Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on 5 June 2024. However, technical issues disrupted their mission. NASA ultimately sent the Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, delaying their return until February. Further issues with the SpaceX capsule added another month’s delay.
The arrival of their relief crew on Sunday finally allowed Wilmore and Williams to come home. With an uncertain weather forecast later in the week, NASA decided to bring them back slightly earlier than planned. They departed with NASA’s Hague and Russia’s Gorbunov, who had arrived last autumn on their own SpaceX capsule, leaving two empty seats for the Starliner duo.
By the time they splashed down, Wilmore and Williams had spent a staggering 286 days in space—278 days longer than intended. They had orbited Earth 4,576 times and travelled 195 million kilometres.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control in California radioed.
“What a ride,” responded Hague, the capsule’s commander. “I see a capsule full of grins ear to ear.”
This isn’t the first time dolphins have been present at a splashdown. In 2021, a lone dolphin was spotted swimming near recovery boats as they headed to collect the Dragon spacecraft used for SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission. Unlike this latest pod, however, that dolphin didn’t stick around.
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